With the generous support of the Scheidel Foundation, the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) has been studying community-based organization (CBO) and higher education institution partnerships.
The third installment in our series of case studies, it is our hope that these resources will help our members and external partners form and maintain meaningful partnerships and increase positive postsecondary outcomes for all students.
NCCPC’s journey to partnership explores facilitation on the macro level, working with its members as a collective and partnering with both individual institutions and university systems. Rather than being one organization itself, it’s a group utilizing
a collective impact model, comprised of college promise programs such as Oakland Promise, and K-12 organizations like KIPP Public Schools Northern California. Several NCCPC members were struggling to cultivate partnerships individually, so they brought
the challenge to NCCPC within eight months of founding the coalition – if they work together, can they facilitate partnerships between postsecondary for the collective benefit of all of their students at those campuses?
Each of these organizations, Oakland Promise, KIPP Public Schools Northern California, Stockton Scholars and Richmond Promise, entered into data sharing agreements with NCCPC, as NCCPC served as the pass through for data sharing agreements with the institutions.
To enable regional coordination, these four members had to examine and streamline their internal data sharing practices to be acceptable for partnership.
NCCPC sought to strengthen members’ data on student persistence and degree attainment. They also understood the importance of knowing students’ needs before they take an end of year/term survey. Facilitating partnerships with the colleges at the coalition
level was the best way to get this data, but it also meant strengthened relationships with and between their members. Members could learn from each other and make more progress faster by utilizing their collective power.
Deliverables
All three partnerships have strong access and success provisions, ensuring students receive wraparound support from both their NCCPC member organization as well as the institution to ease their transition to college. Together, NCCPC and each institution
collaborate on 1) direct fall application outreach efforts toward NCCPC Scholars (e.g., visiting NCCPC schools, inviting NCCPC Scholars to campus recruitment activities, hosting NCCPC Scholars on campus, identifying NCCPC Scholars in CalStateApply,
etc); 2) hosting a welcome event for all newly admitted NCCPC Scholars at the beginning of the fall semester for NCCPC matriculates and families; 3) ensuring NCCPC Scholars enroll in the campus’ first-year experience program for their first two semesters.
California State University – East Bay is a five-year partnership, whereas San José City College is a three-year partnership.
Additionally, the three-year University of California Office of the President partnership has a strong focus on eliminating scholarship displacement (per the California Ban on Scholarship Displacement Act of 2021, which NCCPC advocated tirelessly for
since 2020.) NCCPC members like Richmond Promise and Stockton Scholars provide advising to their scholars such as reviewing award letters to ensure students’ aid packages represent the maximum of federal, state and local aid they are eligible for.
The UC Office of the President has committed to working with the Coalition to provide training related to financial aid packaging and how UC treats outside scholarships at least once every academic year.
While the data-coordination in fighting scholarship displacement is strongest for NCCPC through its members, they launched an open access “
Report a Financial Aid Issue” form in spring 2023 so that any student across California can submit scholarship displacement cases. Since launch, NCCPC
has received 22 cases.
Evaluation
NCCPC hosts the communities of practice throughout the year to evaluate the progress of each partnership. But the implementation of annual meetings between NCCPC, its member organizations and the campus is a crucial element of evaluating the partnership.
Cal State East Bay piloted a dashboard to present NCCPC Scholars that the NCCPC team could review during our meetings.
The campus and NCCPC worked with the Campus Partnerships Committee to schedule and develop the agenda for the two-hour virtual meeting. For the first two years, these meetings were attended by over 20 people representing the campus and different NCCPC
staff and members.
Maintaining Institution Partnerships
By approaching partnership at the university system level, NCCPC was able to avoid reestablishing buy-in from new university leadership on individual campuses each time there was a personnel change. These partnerships became an integral part of the university
system culture. Members utilizing their combined student populations became a strong selling point, especially when students are from the same high schools in the same districts. Regional, multi-organization partnerships streamline event planning
and execution of programming, as well as lower the university staff’s needed capacity.
Partnership Expansion Plans
NCCPC is moving toward equipping members to facilitate their own partnerships. Having student data pass through a middle entity increases risk and privacy concerns, so members who’ve done this successfully will be paired with other members to glean replicable
practices. This change of role, from pass through to self-sufficiency assistance and technical support, will be crucial as NCCPC adds more members to the collective partnerships, and more campuses reach out to NCCPC to enable new opportunities.
Institutional Impact
NCCPC’s strategy of approaching partnership with university systems as a coalition allowed them to begin exploring partnerships with many of the 116 schools in the California Community Colleges system. This macro level blueprint saves both the coalition
and the institutions time, as they work to align goals, deliverables and achieve shared outcomes.
San Jose City College acknowledged that this partnership with NCCPC on behalf of their CBO members helps them to achieve goals laid out in their strategic plan. The UC partnership “aligns with UC Regents Policy 3201 which states that the University’s
goal is ‘maintaining the affordability of the University for all the students admitted within the framework of the Master Plan.’”
Lessons Learned
Visibility is important long before agreements are signed. Go to the president’s luncheon, invite schools to your events and attend theirs, move beyond emails. Utilize every opportunity for face time with the people you’re trying to connect with. Find
ways to keep yourself relevant before seeking and throughout partnerships.
Stay encouraged, this is a marathon. Curry Nuñez notes, “A no is a no now. Leadership changes and timing is everything, so be gently and strategically relentless. Strive to be better at ‘friend-raising’ and ‘partner-raising.’ Seek to build relationships
before going right for the signed agreements. And don’t cancel all your visibility efforts after the no. Keep going.”
Once you’ve established connections, be sure to familiarize yourself with the administrative and executive assistants of those same leaders. These employees can be your guide to anticipating what’s coming. Be sure to nurture your relationships with people
doing the boots on the groundwork of your partnership like program managers, advisors, etc.
Explicitly state in your MOU, ensure there is at least one institutional staff member and one person in the CBO dedicated, in their job description, to maintaining and overseeing this partnership. Someone has to own the relationship, or it will fizzle
out.
Use your college fair invitations as an in! Instead of repeatedly inviting schools that aren’t sufficiently supporting your students, utilize the opportunity to share your concerns with admissions staff.
Be ready to share how their data (and strategic plan!) aligns with yours. “Be very clear about the value-add you can provide the university. Outline the value you’re already bringing to the university. Simple math here but if you ‘only’ have 12 students
at a school and eight are African Americans, and the school only has 30 [African Americans], that’s leverage! Approach this the same way you would when approaching a funder. Know your data and as much of their data as you can to see where the overlap
is,” Curry Nuñez says.
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